A Ukrainian Pastor on Faith, Hope, and the Terror of War, with Fyodor Raichynets

War has wracked Ukraine for 1,678 days—outlasting both World Wars. In this conversation with Mark Labberton, Fyodor Raichynets—a theologian at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, pastor of a church in Bucha, and a military chaplain serving on the front lines in Kyiv—explains what it is like to be under near-constant drone and ballistic attack and how that has affected his faith, memory, and experience of time. 

War has reshaped the way he loves, forgives, and serves; it has induced a fear even to hope. Together, they discuss trauma as a national condition and the temptation to despair when God seems not to intervene. They also consider the moral wounds soldiers carry from killing, the competing prayers of two mothers inside one congregation, and what it means to see God in the face of the needy—even when the needy include one’s enemies.

Episode Highlights

• “‘Into your hands I commit my spirit’—and with these words on my lips I go to bed every night ... I go to bed with the thought that I may not wake up in the morning, so I just make sure that my spirit is in his hand.”

• “If I have something to share and there is a person that needs it, well, I would share anyway ... Probably that’s what the love for the enemies is all about.”

• “I jokingly put it that I have this ‘planophobia’ in the recent years, so I’m even afraid to plan my life, but you know that you cannot do it without any planning.”

• “Trauma emerges in a place where you find rescue and where instead of security you find insecurity.”

• “I was just thinking how blessed we are that we don’t know the future. And this not knowing what is ahead of us keeps us going, in fact.”

• “We have fear to hope, because whatever we hoped for over these four years, it just gets worse, not better.”

• “Those whom they have killed ... they come to them in their dreams, in their sleep, and they said that they physically sense it. They even sense it that someone is grabbing their hand.”

• “One wife would pray ... that God would protect her son not to be drafted. But in the same group there is a mother who asked to pray that God would protect her son on the front line. So what should we pray for?”

• “War creates such a basic need ... you need water, you don’t need luxury things. ... So when we see the needy people and we minister to them, that is what makes us a people of a pure heart.”

About Fyodor Raichynets

Fyodor Raichynets is a theologian, pastor, and military chaplain in Kyiv, Ukraine. He heads the department of theology at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he teaches leadership and biblical studies, particularly the Gospel of Matthew, and directs its master’s program in transformative leadership. A former student of Miroslav Volf in Osijek, Croatia, he ministered for years across the Balkans. He pastors Bethany Church in Bucha and wrote the chapter on the pure in heart for Beatitudes and Terror: A Ukrainian Theological Response to Russian Aggression. Since the 2022 invasion, he has led relief work among Kyiv’s most vulnerable, feeding the elderly and the displaced.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Beatitudes and Terror: A Ukrainian Theological Response to Russian Aggression, the volume with Fyodor Raichynets’s chapter on the pure in heart: https://langhamliterature.org/books/beatitudes-and-terror

• Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary: https://uets.edu.ua/en/about-us

• Ways to support UETS relief ministry and the training of ministers: https://uets.edu.ua/en/ways-to-support

• Fyodor Raichynets on Facebook, where he posts daily wartime reflections: https://www.facebook.com/fyodor.Raichynets

• “A Voice from Kyiv,” Raichynets’s earlier conversation with Miroslav Volf: https://faith.yale.edu/media/a-voice-from-kyiv-fyodor-Raichynets

• Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, referenced on who survived the camps: https://www.beacon.org/Mans-Search-for-Meaning-P602.aspx

Show Notes

• Kyiv under fire

• A rough night of combined ballistic and drone attack

• Waking to explosions, then morning news of the aftermath

• Two-tier alerts now: yellow for drones, red for ballistic strikes

• Reactive drones flying higher and faster, harder to track or down

• Lecturing to students while watching drone paths on a phone

• A nightly prayer, and sleeping unsure of waking

• “Planophobia,” losing the ability to plan anything ahead of time

• No place and no time that feels secure; a wearying insecurity

• The abnormal becoming normal; an average day in Kyiv

• War as trauma

• Trauma as rescue turned insecurity

• The strange grace of not knowing how long war would last

• When prolonged tribulation curdles into temptation

• Wrestling with why God does not simply stop one man’s cruelty

• The fear to hope after four years of worsening, not relief

• Frontline confessions, soldiers haunted by those they killed

• A Bucha church tending wives, mothers, and children of soldiers

• Two mothers, one prayer group, opposite prayers over the draft

• Victor Frankl on who survived the camps: Man’s Search for Meaning

• A theological perception of time; only the present is given

• War compressing time into loving, forgiving, blessing without delay

• Wisdom as God’s truth and character lived in context

• The pure in heart, and seeing God in the needy (Beatitudes and Terror)

• Jesus in the midst of suffering, unlike the pharaohs who cause it

• Adopting soldiers’ families; medicine carried to a mother at the front

• Serving civilians who await the Russians, love of enemies in practice

• How to support relief and minister training: Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary

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